Mac versus PC after a week of use

Hi just thought I would post on here after using the daughters new Mac for a week, this is only really a comparison on looks, general use and safari, and is hardly an in depth report.

The Mac is a 1.65mhz G4 powerbook with 1.5gig of memory running Leopard, the PC is an acer 800mhz with 1.25gig of memory running XP. both are laptops sitting next to each other on wi-fi

Looks: the mac is the better looking in its sleeker silver case this is continued with a nicely designed power supply, so 1 up to the mac

Use: the mac boots about four times quicker than the Acer, the Mac is a clean install where as the Acer is now 2 years old, so when new would have booted quicker than it does now, but still way behind the Mac. so 2 up to the Mac

Expandability: the mac has 2xUSB, 1xPCMA, 1x400+1x800 firewire, S video, modem port, gigabit ethernet, DVI and built in wi-fi
The Acer has 4xUSB 2xPCMA 1x400 firewire 100mbps ethernet, modem, S video, built in wi-fi serial and parallel ports.
If your in to video then the mac wins, if like me your not, then with 4 USB the PC wins. not sure how to score this, if I had the mac I would have to carry around a USB hub. so for me its one up for the PC

Screen: The Mac has a bigger screen but apart from that seems no better, the layout of icons to me is no better than the PC. so for me thats draw.

Browser: The Mac has Safari the PC IE7, in use practically no difference, with loading or displaying screens, I cannot see a reason to prefer one over the other except personal preference.

So at this stage the Mac is in front, but when it was bought was it worth the extra cash? I believe it was in the region of £1700 new in 2005, the Acer bought in the same year less than £400+£100 for a 1gig memory chip.

My own view after this limited use is that both this Mac and PC are good machines, and either would do what I want, but because of the price difference to me their is no contest. For my daughter its the opposite because of the superior photographic abilities of the Mac and worth the extra money.

Olley

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

Comparing the performance of a £500 machine against a £1700 Mac and then lower priced Acer doing so well is either a testament to the PC or it just shows how expensive macs are.

IMO If you had spent £1700 on a PC two years ago, the spec for that money would have ensured that it would have beaten the Mac hands down today and yes that is considering photography as a primary use. Scratch disk size, memory, and memory speed are the most important things when it comes to photography and £1700 2 years ago would have bought you that in spades, and with a stable platform like Windows XP and using the same Photoshop software the differences would really be slight with maybe the Mac scoring a little higher with file handling but that's about it. The mac would have still looked nicer though

I have a Toshiba Satellite P20 bought around 4 years ago cost around £2000. Pentium 3.4 HT (now called dual core) 2gb RAM Nvidea gforce fx5200 graphics 80gb hard drive. This machine is faster than any recent machine I have used which is why I am delayng buying a new one. I run Vista home premium and use Adobe CS3 and use an external 300gb hard drive as a scratch disc. I have never had problems with this machine crashing or any other trouble for that matter. As I said in a recent post I would consider a Mac but on reflection I have spent many years building up an understanding of how PC's work and I'm not sure I want to go through that again with a Mac.

Ken n Steph
You can't have a rainbow without rain!
Nutter at large, Ken, AKA :- Munchie. Grand Chieftain of the Munchieoi's

I suppose we do have to be careful to compare like with like - comparing desktops with laptops will always produce unequal results as laptops have traditionally not been at the cutting-edge as desktops have, whatever the platform - Mac, Windows, Unix etc.

If Macs had no place, or seemingly very little place, in society, then the brand would have ceased to exist - likewise if PCs were the great answer to all computing needs, including that of the photographic / design industries, then everyone would have migrated there - they haven't, so obviously there is place for both. As there is for Open source / Unix systems apart from Macs, which are based on them.

We all make our own choices - I have the privilege and pleasure of using and maintaining a Mac network, as well as a number of PCs. Each has its merits. I'm glad I have a good knowledge of both, it helps to make (and help others make) informed choices.

As long as equipment is doing what we need it to do, I for one am happy with it - whatever the initial price may have been. Macs are certainly more expensive than PCs, but build quality, lower priced OSes and hardware that doesn't outdate quite as rapidly does balance that out quite a bit.

Whatever system one purchases, if you buy top-end, it should always future-proof it that bit longer. A dual processor Mac G5 desktop, with 8GB RAM is around 4 years old now but still makes most PCs look like granny's wheelchair in operating speed. Plus its Firewire 800 enabled and can run RAID arrays of up to 20 eSATA harddisks.....
cost may have been around £2000 initally but replacement not envisaged for some time as it is still very current, whereas a PC of that vintage would likely have been junked by now. Similarly with Ken / Stephs PC setup, I would imagine it will be very fast and able for some time to come. Generally, you get what you pay for, whatever the platform!

Just a thought - screen size of laptops is a big determinant of price as large screen laptops, be they mac or pc, are quite a bit more expensive than smaller screens. Comparing a 17" screen laptop with a 13" or 15" one will always have quite a price difference and this should be taken into account.

As you said, Olley, the comparison between the mac and pc laptop is quite superficial - for me, I cannot stand IE7 and have Firefox as a browser on the PCs. The usability of both Firefox and Safari is in my opinion so much better than IE7. :Cool: However, IE7 is still usable - if needs must!!

I think this is the crux of the matter. I have a friend who having seen mine bought his wife one for her birthday. His only criteria was it had to be a Toshiba. Got one on offer £400 from PC world. Now can't understand the difference!!
If only he'd told me his intent knowing what his wife would be likely to be using it for I could have advised him and helped to find a suitable machine. I'm sure anyone looking for a mac would be well advised to consult someone like Laurie who knows what to look for. On the cost issue, I was working at the time and could afford to buy what I wanted but in hindsight it was a good buy as I feel I'll get at least another couple of years out of it. (he say's touching wood)

Ken n Steph
You can't have a rainbow without rain!
Nutter at large, Ken, AKA :- Munchie. Grand Chieftain of the Munchieoi's